Sir Ian McKellen, co-founder of Stonewall, visited Cottenham Village College on behalf of the charity. He spoke to groups of pupils and answered many questions about his life and acting career, and talked about Stonewall’s campaign to tackle homophobic bu

Anti-gay bullying against schoolchildren in the Cambridge area has tripled over four years, shock data has revealed.

Calls have been made to stamp out prejudice after the number of homophobic incidents in classrooms and playgrounds increased from 16 in 2010 to 69 last year amid a steady rise in attacks.

The total number of bullying and prejudice related incidents also increased from 376 to 415 in the same period, according to data from Cambridgeshire County Council.

Cambridge MP Julian Huppert was appalled by the data.

He said: “These are disturbing figures which show that there is a level of intolerance among some young people in our schools.

“Young people are very impressionable and clearly they often make judgements based on hearsay or poor example. I hope that teaching staff will do all they can to impress upon pupils the need to treat everyone as an individual with his or her own talents and merits and offer them the respect they deserve.

“If we are to build cohesive and tolerant communities in the future we must try to make sure the next generation develop understanding so that we can stamp out this type of unacceptable behaviour.”

Cllr Fiona Onasanya, county councillor for King’s Hedges and Labour’s spokeswoman on children and young people, said: “These figures show how much work still needs to be done in schools to ensure that prejudice based/hate/bullying incidents are tackled and prevented.

“Schools should be an inclusive environment, irrespective of race or sexual preference, and all pupils should feel safe and happy.

“The world as we know it is diverse but often still divided, and it is tough enough breaking through barriers of poverty without adding in the fear of bullying by others.

“All of us – teachers and school leaders, parents, friends – should robustly challenge discrimination of any kind wherever it is found and work to change hearts and minds.

“The county council has always had a clear role to support schools in this but given that almost all Cambridgeshire’s secondaries are now academies and operate independently from the council, we should also be looking closely at how we work with them in the future.”

Cllr David Harty, the council’s education chief, said: “The county council takes all forms of bullying extremely seriously and has a number of initiatives which have been highly successful in raising awareness and reducing incidents of bullying.

“We have recently developed a new website PRIDE (Prejudice-Related Incident Data Entry), which enables schools and academies to report incidents of prejudice-related bullying.

“The Cambridgeshire Race Equality and Diversity Service (CREDS) also works with the local LGBT youth charity SexYOUality to deliver training for schools.

“The county council has been a national Stonewall Education Champion since 2008 and came first in the Equality Index in 2011, 2nd in 2012 and 5th in 2013.

“Schools and parents contact CREDS for advice, guidance and support when incidents arise and education officers work with CREDS when they are contacted about prejudice-related issues.”